The Cheerleaders(22)

In front of a small two-story house with peeling yellow siding, Ginny Cordero is gardening. By herself—she’s not helping anyone, like how I used to help my mom weed the front yard at our old house. Ginny is bent over, tugging bent and dead stems out of the dirt, as if this garden is all hers.

“Hi,” I say.

Ginny turns around. She holds up a hand in a feeble wave, confusion knitting her brow. Water drips from the can dangling from her other hand.

Ginny meets me at the bottom of her driveway. She looks at Mango, but she doesn’t bend to pet him, like most people usually do. “What’s his name?”

“Mango.” There’s a beat of awkward silence. And then it tumbles out of my mouth: “My sister named him.”

Ginny is quiet. But the look on her face says I haven’t made her feel awkward; she almost looks sad. “She was really nice. Your sister.”

I hesitate. “Do you want to take a walk with me?”

“Sure.”

Ginny leaves the watering can on her front stoop. A black and white cat comes up to the glass door. When it sees Mango, its tail goes erect. Mango lets out a howl, and the cat rockets away.

“Sorry,” I say.

“It’s okay.” Ginny rejoins me, and we head down the driveway together. “It’s hot out.”

“I know.” I don’t know if I can do this: make painful small talk about the weather. I don’t know why I even came here.

“You know, Jen went to the same gym as me,” Ginny says. “A long time ago.”

Mango stops in his tracks. He sniffs where the lawn meets the street several houses down from Ginny’s. He starts circling; if Ginny weren’t here, I’d tug at him to keep moving. But I don’t want Jen to escape—to disappear into the graveyard of dead conversations.

“I remember seeing you at the gym,” I say.

“Your sister was kind. There aren’t a lot of kind people.”

Her voice trails off, and I’m hit with the memory of ninth grade, sitting in the back of the class in earth science. The girls next to me snickered whenever our teacher called out Ginny’s full name during attendance. Virgin-ia, they’d say, emphasis on virgin—look at her linebacker shoulders and flat chest. She probably doesn’t even get her period yet.

And I did nothing, because it wasn’t my problem. I said nothing, because Kelsey Gabriel, who was taking the class for the second time, was the one who dubbed Ginny Man Arms.

Ginny finally looks at me, her train of thought recaptured. “Your sister deserved better. All those girls did.”

“You know that house across from mine?” I ask.

“The unfinished one?”

I nod. “Have you seen anything weird? Like someone who doesn’t live around here hanging around the house?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Ginny’s forehead scrunches up. “Why?”

Whatever pressed me to ask her about the house is also telling me not to say I found something weird in the house. If I did, I’d have to say why I was in the house in the first place. Would Ginny even believe me if I told her?

“No reason,” I say. “I should get home. Thanks for walking with me.”

Ginny nods. As I’m turning around, she says my name. She holds up a hand. “See you at practice tomorrow.”





The first week of school last fall, Mr. Ward moved my seat across the room from Rachel’s because we wouldn’t stop talking. We took to texting, and Mr. Ward spent the rest of the year eyeballing our phones under our desks and sighing like he was questioning every choice he ever made in life.

I kind of sucked back then.

Anyway, Mr. Ward doesn’t look too psyched to see me standing in his doorway after last period Monday afternoon. He shoves a stack of papers into his briefcase and blinks. “Are you looking for Ms. Axelrod? Her class was upstairs last period.”

“I actually wanted to talk to you. Do you have a minute?”

“Sure, sure. Come in.” Mr. Ward tugs at his tie to loosen it and cranks open the window behind his desk.

I step into the room, inexplicably nervous. Mr. Ward sits in one of the desks at the front of the room and drags another chair so it’s facing him. He gestures for me to take it. As I set my bag on the desk and settle into the chair, I notice a dab of crusted mustard on his tie.

“So what’s up?” Mr. Ward crosses his legs at the ankles.

“My sister was in your class when she was a sophomore.”

Mr. Ward blinks, like he can’t tell if I’m asking him or telling him. “Yeah, she was. Really talented writer.”

“This is going to sound weird.” I relax the hand that’s holding the poem I found in my sister’s copy of Wuthering Heights. I’d been clutching it so tightly that I’m worried the sweat on my palm will make the ink bleed. “I’m looking for someone. I think they were in your class the same period as my sister.”

“Okay. Who is this someone?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “But I’m ninety-nine percent sure it’s a boy.”

Mr. Ward’s forehead creases. “Can you tell me anything else about him?”

I think of the argumentative text messages and the refusal to tell me his identity. “He was probably kind of a jerk.”